Every time a believer comes here saying his prayers heal people, I invite them to heal my eye. So far their score is zero.

Ahhh, but eye damage can be healed by prayer because people can't see the damage. Blindness can be psychological, it can be caused by tempory inflamation of the brain or a lie. It is easy to make the claim that you were healed with no outward facing evidence.

Every time a believer comes here saying his prayers heal people, I invite them to heal my eye. So far their score is zero.

Ahhh, but eye damage can be healed by prayer because people can't see the damage. Blindness can be psychological, it can be caused by tempory inflamation of the brain or a lie. It is easy to make the claim that you were healed with no outward facing evidence.

I know mine isn't psychological - I've seen the photo enlargements that compare it to my healthy eye. But you're correct - I would not accept a healing like my eye being healed in someone else as evidence that prayer works.

However, I would absolutely accept it as evidence if my eye suddenly healed itself - that is the point I put to all the theists who come here saying "I pray, and healings happen!". I'm asking them to demonstrate that talent or gift in a situation where no coincidence or natural process is possible.....and they all fade away as soon as I do so.

My father was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) back in the early 90's. When he was first diagnosed the doctor told him he would probably die within a few years if not before. Since then I've personally seen many friends and family, numerous ministers, a Catholic priest, and a congregation of Pentecostals who anointed him with oil, all pray for him to be cured. He's also told me of other friends that have prayed with him to be cured and feel God's love. Even though he has made it well beyond the few years he was told he would live, he still continues to show the signs that the disease is still progressing. He's constantly tired, his left arm twitches a lot, and he's been starting to get a limp. I told him once to find a new god to pray to to see if that one would cure him, but he just laughed.

My father was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) back in the early 90's. When he was first diagnosed the doctor told him he would probably die within a few years if not before. Since then I've personally seen many friends and family, numerous ministers, a Catholic priest, and a congregation of Pentecostals who anointed him with oil, all pray for him to be cured. He's also told me of other friends that have prayed with him to be cured and feel God's love. Even though he has made it well beyond the few years he was told he would live, he still continues to show the signs that the disease is still progressing. He's constantly tired, his left arm twitches a lot, and he's been starting to get a limp. I told him once to find a new god to pray to to see if that one would cure him, but he just laughed.

Religion itself is a pretty nasty infection. It makes people delusional, disables the logic circuits in the brain and can cause the host to actively try to infect other victims.Prayer seems to feed this condition rather than cure it.

Prayer does cure one particular illness, and rather effectively to boot. I believe that the technical term for it is FeellikeIshoulddosomethingtohelpanddonotfeellikeactuallydoinganythingbutwanttofeellikeIdid-itis.

Logged

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

I'd love it if someone could pray away my toenail fungus. Do that and I'm a believer. Decades of this damned stuff. The only thing that came close was meds, which required regular blood tests to ensure that my liver wasn't getting damaged. After a year I had clear nails, until we stopped the meds. Within a few short months it was growing back. Actually, chemo seemed to help it a little bit, but now its seemingly worse than ever. Grrrrr.

So, those of you who believe in spontaneous cures, please get on with it. I will be eternally grateful.

Logged

If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.